Gemu no Jo-o (Game Queen)
by grimrose
Summary: There is a reason why Yuugi's distant businessman father is never around. As a gentle and soft-hearted boy who did not fit into his traditional father's world view, his fiery mother got custody of him. But if he had been born a girl, a soft and feminine and gentle girl, wouldn't things have gone... rather differently? FemYuugi.
1. The Color White

Author's Note: Something never satisfied me about Takahashi's explanation for Yuugi's father. First, if Yuugi's Dad - a wealthy businessman - is still connected to his family, why are his wife and son living with Sugoroku in a tiny flat above a game shop? And why don't we ever see Yuugi's Dad call his family, or send them letters, or fuck I don't know, actually come back in between business trips? I wasn't satisfied. So I read a bunch of fanfiction, came up with a theory, and then thought... what if I gender-bent this?

And thus did this story come to be.

Yes, this is a fem Yuugi story. It starts out as a childhood story, but will eventually leak into the actual series. It will be manga compliant, but will also include Japanese anime filler arcs.

I will add more characters as they appear. Pairings will happen eventually. I'm going to keep them a surprise.

I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh. That honor belongs to Kazuki Takahashi.

Special thanks to Little Kuriboh's Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged, which not only lifts my spirits when I'm feeling down but inspires me to stay involved in the fandom of my very first anime.

Enjoy.

* * *

 **Gemu no Jo-o (Game Queen)**

Chapter One: The Color White

I knew the way to my grandfather's house by heart. This was not, you must understand, out of any sense of filial affection or love - though I _did_ love my grandfather, dearly. But no, that was not it. My grandfather's house was calm, peaceful, if humble. It was my escape.

My father would stay at work late in the evenings, or go to work on weekends, and my mother would _stalk_. She would storm about the house, knocking things over, rearranging things, muttering under her breath, hands working through her short wild hair until it was matted. I would sit at the table with my cooked oysters and I would count the threads in the pristine white carpet below me. Trying to be small.

Eventually, I jerked my chair back with an aborted screeching sound, the chair jarring harshly against the wood flooring of the kitchen behind me, and my mother looked up. I paused.

"Gonna go play," I said feebly. She nodded, looking away, already seeing through me. A constant anger permeated her features.

I went through the vast, neat house, up the geometric staircase to my bedroom. It was a mess, the only room in the house that was. It was painted with winged unicorns and dragons from my storybooks, the only walls in the house that weren't white.

Everything in my first house was white, it seemed. Clean. Serene.

I still don't like the color white.

I heard the front door open and close on the floor below and I could picture him - my father coming in late from work, still in his business suit, putting down his scarf and his briefcase, his mind already working absently over whatever had troubled him at his car company today. My father's frown was not angry or malicious. It was simply the frown of a man who was trying to solve a problem. Sometimes he even had a small smile for me, which my mother never did. He liked how soft-spoken, gentle, and feminine I was, I think. I also think this is what my mother did not like about me - we don't like what we don't understand.

"Why are you home so late?" My mother's words sounded harsh in the silence. "You were supposed to watch Riyeko for the evening so I could get some painting done!"

I could see the vague surprise come over my father's features, as if noticing he had a wife for the first time. My father always looked surprised when my mother spoke.

My mother was gaining steam, puffing up, searing with heat. Even her reddish hair looked like fire. I could see her, too, though I wasn't there. This happened a lot.

"What, is that just the wife's role? To be subordinate to her husband, to look after her child?"

"Don't be ridiculous. I'm trying to put food on the table. I'll stay home this weekend and you can paint then."

"You always say that -!"

"A mother should be glad to look after her daughter." The rebuke was cold, but strangely, it just added fuel to the fire.

"Oh, don't you turn this around on me -! _You!"_ The word was hateful. "You could have a harlot on the side for all I know!" At long last, my father became indignant, that anyone would accuse him of failing in his duties, and the shouting began. I hummed to myself, rocking back and forth as I played with my dolls on the floor, a silent tension building and building inside me. My stomach tied itself in knots. My mind went to a million different places - to how funny going to the bathroom was, and then to my dolls at their tea party, and then to the way I'd dressed up as an Indian princess just the other day, and then I began to wonder what India was like.

It was no use. I could still hear the shouting below me.

I knew even at that young of an age - I was maybe five or six - that my mother had never wanted me. She'd married my father, a traditional man who had wanted a family. In his own quiet way, my father usually got what he wanted, so they had a child. My father was very fond of me, and so was my grandfather. I was not sure who had named me. "Riyeko" means rational child in Japanese. It could have been my father, a huge fan of rationality; it could have been my grandfather, who ran a shop full of rare, unusual, and exotic games and puzzles and who was a gaming strategist.

But either way, I knew it wasn't my mother. Not my fiery anti-establishment artist mother.

Why had she married my father, I wondered? I'd asked her once and she'd slapped me. I didn't ask again.

I realized the world had begun to blur and my eyes stung. I stood up, wiped my eyes, and tiptoed down the stairs, crouching on the landing and looking through the bars. I could see their shadows, shouting and gesticulating in the living room. I crept past them into the entryway, grabbed an umbrella, and moved out the front door into the rain.

* * *

The walk to my grandfather's house - he lived above his game shop, did not have nearly as much money as my father, his son, who had gone down such a different path in life, so different my grandfather had lost all hope for him and turned to me to fill the void - was long for a small child. It was dark and in the rain the figures brushing past me in Domino City, Japan seemed like huge black ghosts. Yet I kept walking. One of my little shoes was loose. I didn't stop to fix it. I was in a hurry.

I looked for sign posts and finally, past the tiny corner drug store, I found it. Kame Games. Kame, the turtle, represented wisdom and longevity. Grandpa said he'd called it that because when he'd started the shop he was already old. I think he was only half joking.

Kame Games was a bizarre building, but that was why I liked it. It was painted bright pink and green and yellow colors, its second floor bulging like a pregnant lady's belly. I could see the pregnant lady, if I looked - the shop was her legs, the house was her belly, the pointed red roof was her neck, and the metal chimney chute was her head.

I knocked on the pregnant lady's legs. "Grandpa!" I called out.

I heard hurried footsteps and he opened the door, staring down at me, his face looking rather pale through his silver beard. "Riyeko-chan?"

"Grandpa, Mommy and Daddy are fighting," I said, looking up at him from underneath the black umbrella. I must have been a very small little thing indeed, tiny even for my age, with a head of short, straight black hair, my heart-shaped face pale and my violet eyes large.

"Again?" His eyes turned sympathetic. "And you came here again, huh?" Then he gave me a hug. I liked Grandpa. Daddy sometimes sneered at his worn overalls, but I liked the rough feel of them and the smell of smoke that pervaded them. He was like a great big portly cushion, warm and comforting. I realized my eyes were making the cloth of the overalls wet. I clutched at him with little fists, the umbrella falling.

He patted me on the back. "Come on inside. I'll make you some snacks and we can watch TV and make another puzzle together, yeah?"

* * *

He only played with me for so long. Eventually he left me to my own devices in the living room, putting together the puzzle on the secondhand couch in front of the coffee table, and went into the hallway with the telephone. He thought I couldn't hear. I could hear.

"I take it by the fact that you haven't called yet that you didn't realize your daughter was missing." Grandpa's tone was dry and acerbic; he'd never have taken it with me. "Don't worry, she's with me. You could have at least noticed she's gone. Can you please come pick her up?"

I swallowed, a hard ball of fear in my stomach. I didn't want Mommy and Daddy to come get me. Not when they were so stressed and angry and upset.

They'd just get mad at me for running off again, and that would hurt. A lot.

* * *

My father came to get me. It made sense. He was the one with the car. It was a nice car, too, a black Cadillac CTS-V, brand new. Leather interior.

We sat in silence during the car ride back to my house. Flashed under lamp posts and neon signs.

"You've got to stop doing this, Riyeko-chan," he said at last. My father never shouted, except around my mother. He was not the type to get angry. I was glad he had picked me up.

"Sorry," I said in a small voice, looking at my hands folded in my lap. "The shouting got really loud."

He sighed. "Yes," he said wryly, "it did." A pause. "She leaves little traps for you," he said at last. "Poisons in disguise." I looked up hesitantly, curious. He had never spoken to me about my mother before. "She'll say things like, 'You don't hate me anymore, do you? Now I'm just dead weight.' If you say that yes, you don't hate her anymore, that would imply that you used to hate her, and that you consider her dead weight. If you say that no, you do hate her, well, then you're saying you hate her."

I paused. Working up the courage to ask, without asking, what I was about to ask. "She recited your wedding vows to you a few nights ago," I said. "She asked you if you even understood what they meant."

He sighed. "You heard that?"

I nodded.

"... Look, Riyeko-chan," he said. "Marriage can be very rewarding. But you have to know what you're getting yourself into. You have to know who you're marrying before you marry them."

"But I know you, Grandpa, and Mommy. I know you just fine," I said.

"No, that's not what I meant," he said evenly, still concentrating on the road before him. "I meant, the man you're going to marry? You have to see the absolute worst side of him. His darkest parts. You've seen Mommy and I scream at each other, haven't you?" I nodded. "And do you still love us?"

"Of course!"

"Well," he said, almost too quietly for me to hear, "at least someone does." Then, louder: "That's what I mean. If you can hate someone and still love them, that's love. I'm not telling you to put up with someone who treats you badly. I'm just saying that if you ever want to get married, you have to find someone you like even when you absolutely hate their guts.

"Understand?"

I nodded. "Yes, Daddy."

I understood what he was saying, I think, even then - that when _he_ hated Mommy, he didn't love her. He hadn't known her well enough before the wedding. Hadn't seen the worst side of her yet. And she hadn't seen his.

I have never forgotten this conversation.

* * *

My mother was all over me the minute I got home.

"Riyeko-chan, what on earth were you thinking?! You could have been abducted! You could have been killed! You could have been -!"

I made myself very small again, and my father closed his eyes and sighed, as if the noise annoyed him and he'd been enjoying the reprieve.

Later, as I was going to bed, he came inside my room to kiss me goodnight and turn my night light on. I was far too small for my huge blue bed, soft and lacy.

He kissed my forehead and went to the door.

"Daddy?"

He turned back absently, as if deep in thought. "Yes?"

"Are you and Mommy going to get a divorce?"

His eyes flew open wide for the first time. "That's a silly question," he said at last, and he left the room, turning off the light and shutting the door. He didn't give me an answer.

Unusual for my father.


	2. Horror Movie

Chapter Two: Horror Movie

My mother let me watch horror movies on TV, even though they gave me nightmares and my father said I had no place watching such "garbage." I think it was one of her ways of getting back at him, since she had to be the home-maker and he was at work all day. This is a necessary prelude to what happened one day, which is that my father took my mother down to the basement where not even I could hear, to the place where my mother planted her seeds and then helped the plants grow under a false sun light, and I was afraid he was going to kill her like in all the horror movies. Basements weren't good, I knew that much.

He'd as much as said he hated her, after all.

I crept toward the basement door and crouched, trying to listen, but the basement was sound proofed. No noise emanated from beyond. I couldn't feel any earth-shaking crashes or thumps. I went to sit down on the couch in front of the TV, flipping through the channels like a six-year-old expert, swinging my feet, a strange anxiety filling me.

At last, the door flew open and I jumped up - my mother wasn't dead, but her eyes were red and tears were streaming down her face. My father rarely showed emotion, but today he looked sad as he stood beside her. They were a united front for the first time in my memory.

Maybe, I thought wildly, they were going to get rid of me. Maybe that would fix all their problems. Would I have to go to an orphanage?

"I know this has all been very hard for you, Riyeko-chan," said my father. "So I think you deserve to be the first to know. I've filed for a divorce." It sounded like defeat.

I struggled back in my memory for what that meant. "So… you're not going to be married anymore?"

My mother choked out an involuntary sob, which answered my question for me. A sense of false calm came over me. _Someone_ had to be calm, in this situation. "It's okay, I'm sure you'll both find other people," I said, and a strange look came over my mother's face. Not her usual anger, but something beyond that. It looked remarkably like hatred. She came forward, her hand raised - I flinched back - and then she paused and a calm settled on her features, a calm that was frightening with her tearful pallor and wild hair. She looked like pictures I had seen of vengeful ghosts.

She turned silently, walked up the stairs, and shut her bedroom door. I looked with big, fearful eyes at my father.

In the slightest, minutest way, he gave a shrug.

* * *

I had wanted him to tell me everything was going to be alright, but he did not, because everything was not going to be alright.

The calm I presented for my parents was a front. I wanted to scream inside. I wanted to cry. I wanted to hug both of them and beg them to stay together.

I didn't. I knew it would be of no use.

* * *

My things were packed into a fancy little pink and tan designer sports bag, and I was sent to stay with my grandfather. He welcomed me with open arms, greeting me with cheer. He made me fancy breakfasts and let me play with anything in the store, let me count money at the shop register and made sure I had fun all day long.

But it was all wrong, somehow. The home above the shop was cramped and pushed together, my bed small and plain and my bedroom tiny. The shop was loud and crowded and so was the street. We were in a far different district from where I had grown up. And Grandpa wasn't Mommy and Daddy. He was fun, but he wasn't my parents.

"Grandpa," I asked him one night over a board game after dinner, "will I have to get used to all this?"

"What do you mean?" he asked, frowning.

My eyes stung again. I bit my lip. "Am I going to have to stay here now that… now that Mommy and Daddy are separating?" My face worked to keep from crying.

He pulled me into another hug and I sniffled. "It's not that they don't want you, Riyeko-chan," he said in a low, concerned voice. "They just don't want you to see them so upset while they figure stuff out. It will all be fine in the end. Trust me."

I paused. "I'm sorry," I said in a watery voice. "All I ever do is cry."

"Little girls are supposed to cry when bad things happen to them," he said. "One day, you will smile again."

I sat up straight. "But I don't _want_ to be the kind of girl who cries all the time!" I frowned.

I thought the frown would make me look like Daddy, but he surprised me by laughing softly. "Well, perhaps you are your mother's daughter after all," he said.

* * *

And so the waiting game began. The wait to see what my parents had decided - what my future would be. Who would I go with? Mommy? Daddy? Would I switch between them both? What would happen to our house?

I had no answers, and that frustrated me. More than that, it frightened me.

For one whole month, I was frightened.


	3. An Invisibility

Chapter Three: An Invisibility

I was sitting on the same old secondhand couch, watching some anime, that morning. Granpda had made me fermented soybeans and toast with marmalade for breakfast, and so I was sipping away at that, crunching on the toast, when I heard the shop door open and close on the floor below and then I heard - my father's voice.

Brightening, I jumped up and ran into the game shop. "Daddy -!" I cried in delight, and then I stopped. I had never seen him look so cold, serious, formal. He had a suitcase and was dressed in a suit like he was going away on a business trip, first-class. The suit was black. I don't know why I remember that.

"Riyeko," he said, "get your things. We're leaving."

Grandpa had half-risen in surprise, bewilderment, worry - it was hard to tell. "What happened?" he asked as if flabbergasted.

"I got custody. I'm taking her away with me on business - an extended stay in America." The way my father said it, so coolly, was heart rending. In retrospect, I think he was just acting that way because inside he was upset. But I didn't know that then. I felt my world tilt off its axis.

"America?" I managed to gasp out. I looked over the game shop, bright morning sunlight sparkling across its glass cases, holding cards and old pieces of wooden dice, random bits of puzzles and toy games. It was all I knew.

"What about me?" my grandfather was saying angrily. "What about her mother? Daichi, you're not thinking this through -!"

"As a matter of fact, I've given it a great deal of thought." The same tone. Flat. Dead. In that moment my father was an alien to me. "You can call her whenever you'd like. As for Akane -" He gave me a sideways glance. "She will have to figure things out for herself."

I knew what he meant, and tears stung my eyes - those stupid old tears again. My mother had agreed to give up custody and let me be taken away to America. My mother didn't want me.

My father may have been cold, but at least even when I was a child he'd always given me credit for intelligence. He'd known I'd put two and two together.

I ran away. It was all I could think of to do. Breath coming short stops - legs pumping - I sprinted up the stairs to my room, threw myself on the bed in a shower of tears, and sobbed. I'd been complaining about the tiny, hard bed all month, but now, suddenly, I loved it. I loved everything about the dear little old place I was leaving.

Call me melodramatic if you'd like. I certainly know it's what I've called myself, looking back.

I felt more than heard Grandpa enter the room, settle on the bed beside me. He rubbed my back. "It will all be alright, Riyeko-chan." His tone was soft and gentle.

I looked up, feeling snot-nosed and pathetic. "You always say that. How can you know?"

He smiled sadly. "Because I know you. And I know what a tough little girl you are."

I wanted, suddenly, to see myself the way he saw me - through his eyes. I tried, and all I could see was a weak, pale little crying girl. I thought maybe he was lying to me. Maybe I wasn't really strong at all.

* * *

The airport was full to bursting with adults, crowds of people pushing this way and that, the voice speaking up every so often over the intercom. I looked around myself curiously. I was standing beside my father, our suitcases ready and packed, his hand on my shoulder.

I looked up and felt a sudden jolt, as though someone had given my heart a hard, quick squeeze. My mother was standing there in the airport window, her expression torn. "Mommy -!" I cried out, but she'd seen me and was quickly moving away. "Mommy, wait!" I called to her retreating back, moving to run toward her. My father held me back. "Let me go! I have to see Mommy!" For the first time in my life, I struggled. I was angry. I was tired of crying.

"If she wanted to talk to you, she'd be here," said my father in my ear, and only his low, pained tone made me stop. I watched my mother's retreating back fade away - pause - not look back - round a corner and disappear into nothingness. Her reddish hair neat, her purse over her shoulder. She'd always looked so beautiful, I realized. Glamorous.

My grandfather looked after her sadly for a moment, and then walked through the airport doors over to us. "She tried - I guess she couldn't do it," he said. He knelt down and held something out to me, as if seeking to distract me from my mother.

It worked. What he was holding out to me was quite eye-catching. It was a gold box covered in carved picture symbols. A golden eye peeked from the lid. I gasped.

"See what's inside," said my grandfather with a secret, mischievous smile.

My eyes wide, I lifted the lid… it was a puzzle. An incredibly intricate, unfinished gold puzzle.

"It's called the Millenium Puzzle. I found it on an archaeological dig, years and years ago. It was in the tomb of an unknown pharaoh - from Ancient Egypt. He had this puzzle box buried with him. Of course, being a gamer, I had to keep it for myself - this was back when archaeologists were still allowed to keep some of what they found. I never was able to put the puzzle together. All I could gather was that it formed some three dimensional object. Maybe you'll have better luck. Play around with it and think of me, okay?" He was smiling, but the wrinkles around his eyes were creased with sadness.

My father scoffed softly. "Always trying to infect her and fill her head with ridiculous games and puzzles," he muttered begrudgingly. "If I have anything to say about it, no child of mine will grow up to be a gamer." But he didn't forbid me from having the puzzle.

My grandfather looked up and gave my father a tight, acidic smile. "Well, goodness knows I wouldn't want to interfere with your wonderful parenting skills, Daichi," he said. Even I could detect the sarcasm. My father's eyes narrowed.

Ignoring the glare, Grandpa wrapped me in a hug and kissed the top of my head. "The puzzle will protect you," he whispered in my ear. Unable to speak, I nodded.

Grandpa waited until we were through the airport security line. The line moved further and further, until his worried visage, standing very small and alone, disappeared into the crowds.

* * *

The airplane ride takeoff was both terrifying and exhilarating. I gasped and gripped my father's hand as we went faster and faster, slowly tilting off - he smiled, watching me.

Once we were straight and airborne, it was a little easier. The cloud formations in the window were beautiful. The leather seats of first class were nice and large and cushiony, with plenty of leg room; my father bought us lunch, snacks, and juice. I fiddled around with the Millenium Puzzle for a while, before falling asleep in my seat with my neck crooked at a painful, unnatural angle.

So when my father shook me awake, the first thing I noticed was the stiffness in my neck. "Look." He was pointing out the window.

We were beneath the cloud cover now, and I could see distant squares of land - completely empty land, for miles and miles, the kind you would never see in Japan. The squares were green and brown and gold.

"America," he said, smiling.

"America," I breathed, staring with awe out the window. It sounded like a new beginning, a promise, and a fear.

We landed at enormous jolting speeds, before slowing down and getting out at an airport - much like the one we'd left. Only the words on the intercom were in an unfamiliar language, a harsh one. English, I realized.

And the people were different - some looked like me and Daddy, but others looked totally foreign. Skin paler than ours, with broad noses and thick lips. Some with shiny black skin. Some in traditional Arab wear. It seemed like everyone in the whole world was collected in this one American airport.

My father had told me where we were going. We'd landed in a seaside California city. We made it outside, after a long, antsy, fussy, fidgety wait for our luggage to come through in which my father got rather annoyed with me, and a fancy dark car from my father's company was waiting to take us to our new home. I gazed out the windows as we drove through the city. The very sunlight over the great tall metal buildings seemed different, somehow. The signs were all in an unfamiliar language.

We stopped in front of a squarish white beach house with a second-story wrap-around porch. I stepped outside to the cut of the wind, the warmth of the sun, the smell of the salty air. Beyond our house, down on the beach, sunburnt boys without their shirts were playing volleyball. A set of parents were helping their child get her feet wet. Surfers were dotted across the water. The light glistened on the aqua blue.

I turned around to find my father staring down at his luggage in bewilderment. The driver had left it there in front of him and driven away. I giggled.

He looked up and smiled, rolling his shirt sleeves up, and I realized here my father looked kinder and freer than he ever had. "Well," he said with quiet humor, "I guess we're not in Japan anymore." I grabbed my own tiny bag, lifting it up to my chin, and helped my father carry our stuff inside the house, up the stairs, and set it down in the entryway. I looked around.

Purplish-blue carpet, in a very muted color, made up the parts of the floor not taken up by polished wood. Our surroundings were blue and white, with airy window treatments and glass doors going out onto the balcony overlooking the sea. The whole place was very round. I liked our house, I decided - square on the outside, round on the inside. An impossibility.

"A new start," I said, looking up at my father.

"Yes," he said softly, looking around. "A new start."

Down the left-hand hallway was my bedroom, where my bed was nice and big and covered in pink blankets and sheets. Butterfly mobiles hung around the room, and flowers made up the striped wallpaper. I set my series of dolls on my bed, put the Millenium Puzzle box on a shelf.

And then the room was mine.

* * *

The next few days were full of us doing things like going to the grocery store to stock up on food, sitting around in iKea inspecting furniture with our butts, and unpacking. Grandpa called the minute we got in. I kept waiting and waiting for Mommy to call… She never did.

At last, against my father's advice, I called her cell. Our land line was now set on the kitchen counter, so I sat on a stool there by the island, the phone held up to my ear. It rang and rang and rang - hope filled me - and then the hope drowned inside the voice of her answering machine. "Hi, Mommy," I said in a small voice. "It's Riyeko. Just wanted you to know we got in okay… Please call… Bye."

I never heard from my mother again.

It would be pointless to describe how this made me feel. Hurt? Abandoned? Angry? You can guess my emotions. Some of them were mysterious even to myself.

In any case, it didn't matter. As my years in America passed, she and Grandpa and the game shop became a distant memory, Grandpa a friendly voice in Japanese over the phone once a week.

My mother was an invisibility. She was gone.


End file.
